Recommended Reading

We’re blessed to live in a time when high-quality esoteric knowledge is publicly available. SOL students are required (and any other interested folks are encouraged) to select their evening reading from the titles and authors recommended in the lists below.

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Books by W.E. Butler

Apprenticed to Magic
Magic and the Qabalah
Magic: Its Ritual, Power, and Purpose
The Magician, his Training and Work
Practical Magic and the Western Mystery Tradition
How to Develop Clairvoyance
How to Develop Psychometry
How to Develop Telepathy
How to Read the Aura
Lords of Light

Books by Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki

Illuminations
First Steps in Ritual
Highways of the Mind
The Ritual Magic Workbook
The Shining Paths
The Forgotten Mage (by Col. C.R.F. Seymour, edited by DAN)
Inner Landscapes
The Sacred Cord Meditations
The Tree of Ecstasy
The New Book of the Dead
Daughters of Eve
Building a Temple
The Officers of the Temple
Magical Use of Thoughforms (With Herbie Brennan)
The Initiate’s Book of Pathworkings
Your Unseen Power (book and audio mini-course)
The Singing Stones
The Door Unlocked – An Astrological Insight into Initiation (with Stephanie V. Norris)

An Anthology of Occult Wisdom (8 volumes, including material by W.E. Butler, Rev. Robert King, Gareth Knight, and others)

Books by Dion Fortune

NonfictionApplied Magic
Aspects of OccultismEsoteric Orders and Their WorkMystical Meditations on the CollectsThe Mystical QabalahPractical Occultism in Daily LifePsychic Self-DefenceSane OccultismThe Training and Work of an Initiate
Applied Magic

Jaynes, Julian
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Jung, Carl Gustav
Man and His Symbols

Jung, Emma & von Franz, M-L
The Grail Legend

Kaplan, Aryeh
Meditation and the Kabbalah

Kaplan-Williams, Strephon
The Dreamwork Manual

Knight, GarethA Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism (required text for original SOL First Degree Course)
Experience of the Inner Worlds
A History of White Magic (also published as Magic and the Western Mind)
Magical Images and the Magical Imagination
The Practice of Ritual Magic
Occult Exercises and Practices
Esoteric Training in Everyday Life
Dion Fortune and the Threefold Way
I Called it Magic
Yours Very Truly – Gareth Knight

Lang-Simms, Lois
The Christian Mysteries

Laurie, Sanders & Tucker, Melville
Centering

Lemesurier, Peter
The Armageddon Scripts
Beyond All Belief

MacCoun, Catherine
On Becoming an Alchemist

Maltz, Maxwell
Psychocybernetics

Mann, A.J.
The Round Art

Maple, E.
Old Wives’ Tales

Maslow, A.H.
Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences

Masters & Huston
Mind Games

Matthews, John & Caitlin
At the Table of the Grail
The Western Way – 2 vols
– more recently released in a single volume as Walkers Between the Worlds
The Psychic Protection Handbook
– released in the USA as Psychic Shield

Honeycombe, Gordon
Neither the Sea nor the Sand
The Dragon Under the Hill

Kurtz, KatherineLammas Night
The Deryni Trilogy
The Camber Trilogy
The Adept series

Le Guin, Ursula
The Wizard of Earthsea
The Tombs of Atuan
The Farthest Shore
Tehanu
Tales from Earthsea
The Other Wind
The Left Hand of Darkness
The Telling

Lewis, C.S.
The Screwtape Letters
The Great Divorce
Till we have Faces
The Narnia Stories
Out of the Silent Planet
Voyage to Venus
That Hideous Strength

Mahy, Margaret
The Haunting

MacLeod, Fiona
The Washer of the Ford

Mannin, Ethel
Lucifer and the Child

Michener, James Albert
The Source

Mitchison, Naomi
To the Chapel Perilous

Norton, Andre
The Witchworld Series
The Crystal Griffin
The Year of the Unicorn

Stephens, James
The Crock of Gold

Stewart, MaryThe Crystal Cave
The Hollow Hills
The Last Enchantment
The Wicked Day

Timlett, Peter Valentine
The Seedbearers
The Power of the Serpent
The Twilight of the Serpent

Treece, Henry
The Green Man
Jason

Tryon, Thomas
Harvest Home

Walton, Evangeline
The Island of the Mighty
The Song of Rhiannon
The Children of Llyr
Prince of Annwn

Arthurian Literature

Texts- Perlesvaus. (Otherwise known as The High History of the Holy Grail, in the early translation by Sebastian Evans). A better, modern version by Nigel Bryant was published as The High Book of the Grail by Rowman & Littlefield in 1979. The most mystical version of all. A “must”.

- Queste Del Saint Graal. From the Vulgate Cycle, translated as The Quest of the Holy Grail by P. Matarasso. Penguin books 1969. The Cistercian version, very Christian.

- Parzival. By Wolfram von Eschenbach. Translated by H.M. Mustard & Co, Vintage Books, 1961. The oddest of them all in some ways – very hard to read, but there is also a newer translation from Penguin in August, 1980. This one for all the links between East and West, and the West for connecting with the Tree.

- Conte de Graal. Translated as The Story of the Grail, by Chretien de Troyes. The first Grail text to come down to us. Very important.

Peredus, in the Mabinogion. The pagan version – head in the dish, etc. Great stuff!

Critical Works
Divided into four sections: Inner, Mystical, Literary, and Historical. There is, of course, some overlap.

A) Inner:

– The Legend of the Holy Grail. Order of the Rose Cross. Still one of the best, but be warned: the literary side is full of mistakes.

– Avalon of the Heart, Dion Fortune. No comment!

– Orders of the Quest — The Holy Grail, Manley P. Hall. Anthroposophical Publishing, 1960. A bit of a mishmash, but worth reading.

– Mysteries of the Holy Grail, Corinne Heline. Very Christian, but a very unusual angle. Genuine received text.

B) Mystical

– Viscio Pacis: Holy City of the Grail, Helen Adolf. Very important book, this. Hard to get hold of, so better place an ad in the Astral Times! A genuine attempt to put the Grail in a Mystical context.

– The Sovereign Adventure, Anna Morduch.

– The Rose-Garden Game, Eithne Wilkins. Yes, a book about rosaries, but packed with clues and hinds about the Grail of Arthur.

– Arthurian Torso, Charles Williams. Unfinished at his death. CW’s apotheosis, and a book which says more about Arthur&Co than a dozen others ever could. For the advanced student it could be dynamite!

C) Literary

– The Evolution of the A.A. Rom, J.D. Bruce. Not too easy to get, and expensive (2vols hardbound) but still the best history of the literary development around. With this up your sleeve you can become an expert in a week!